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  “It just makes you sick,” Judge said. “It’s your debut, you’re about to lead off the next inning, and something like that happens. It’s tough. Especially all the hard work he’s done, what he’s been through, to finally get a shot up here and get the call.”

  The next day, the Yankees held a closed-door meeting prior to their game in Houston in which the entire team had a video chat with Fowler from his bed at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, hours removed from surgery. New York responded with a 13–4 drubbing of the eventual AL champs, which included a Gardner grand slam and a pitcher-batter showdown between Judge and outfielder Nori Aoki, who had been summoned to the mound to save the Astros’ beleaguered bullpen.

  As they began their ninth-inning battle, Aoki stared at Judge from the rubber and said that he thought the slugger looked “nine or ten feet tall.” Aoki reared back and floated a 78-mph fastball toward home plate, which Judge took a mighty cut at and missed, prompting a loud cackle to spill through the bars of catcher Brian McCann’s mask. On the next pitch, Judge lifted a towering but routine fly to center field.

  “He got me on the first one, geez,” Judge said. “I swung and missed. That was my first time facing a position player. That was a little different. I had Mac behind the plate laughing at me a little bit. It was all fun. It was good. I was trying to hit one to the moon and I just missed it.”

  Frazier walked into the clubhouse the next day, and he was trying hard to keep the focus between the white lines. Frazier admitted having put too much pressure on himself following the July 2016 trade, when he regularly checked the Indians’ box scores to see if Andrew Miller had pitched the night before.

  “I tried to prove that I was the guy that I got traded for and I think I struggled doing that,” Frazier said. “Early on in April I carried some of that over with me and continued to try to make the big-league club out of the first month of the season. I just needed to fail more to realize there are things I need to work on to be the player that I’m capable of being.”

  With 11 extra-base hits in his first 16 games, Frazier joined Joe DiMaggio as the only Yankee ever to do so, and Frazier had tallied 16 RBIs through his first 20 games. That made him the fifth player in franchise history to accomplish that feat, joining select company in Hideki Matsui, DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, and George Selkirk.

  “He’s going to wear you down,” Judge said. “No matter what, he’s going to battle, he’s going to claw, he’s going to scratch….I saw that fire in his eyes. As a player, man, he’s the total package. He’s got speed, he’s got power, he can play any outfield position.”

  Frazier noticed that as he garnered more big-league reps, his cell phone started lighting up with calls and texts from acquaintances from days gone by. Matt Holliday counseled Frazier to keep his inner circle small, focusing on baseball and limiting distractions. It was sage advice that Frazier followed, helping him more thoroughly enjoy the opportunity at hand.

  He found a place to live in Manhattan’s Financial District and spent his down time wandering the city with his girlfriend, Faith Jewkes, sampling some of the finer dining that New York had to offer. As though he were counting from one to three, the product of Logansville, Georgia—where the highest-rated eatery on Yelp is a gyro joint located next to a gas station—rattled off the names of LAVO, TAO, and Bodega Negra among the memorable restaurants he’d visited.

  “It’s been the best time of my life,” Frazier said. “I just said to her, ‘I can’t believe we live in New York.’ It’s just a really cool experience for a young kid getting to grow up and see the bright lights. I think my taste has always liked things to be bigger. I’ve never liked living in a small city; I wanted to live in Atlanta. I like the faster life. I’m not a country person, even though I’m from a very country area. This is the kind of environment where I want to be.”

  • • •

  The Yanks struggled to recapture their early-season mojo, with a crushing Aroldis Chapman blown save on July 14 at Fenway Park marking their nineteenth loss in twenty-six games. The contest dropped them into third place, 4½ games behind Boston in the AL East, and Chris Sale was set to start the following afternoon. Helped by creeping shadows across the infield, Sale’s performance was as good as expected, striking out 13 over 7⅔ scoreless innings before Holliday shocked Boston with a game-tying homer off closer Craig Kimbrel in the ninth.

  The Yanks would have played all night to get that win, and they almost did. Red Sox manager John Farrell protested the game after Holliday embarked on a bizarre base-running play in the 11th inning (sliding back into first base feet-first on a Jacoby Ellsbury ground ball to the right side of the infield) and Didi Gregorius cracked a go-ahead, run-scoring single in the 16th, helping to end the five-hour, fifty-minute affair.

  “To win that game was really big,” Holliday said. “We needed that game.”

  With the Yankees still very much a factor in the division race, Cashman was tethered to his cell phone in advance of the trade deadline, saying that he intended to be “careful buyers” in advance of the July 31 cutoff. A frenzied eighteen-day surge of movement added six new players to the Yankees’ roster, capped by the arrival of right-hander Sonny Gray, who was viewed as the top available starting pitcher in the marketplace.

  Gray’s acquisition highlighted a makeover in which the Yankees brought back a pair of homegrown arms in David Robertson and Tommy Kahnle, a local product in New Jersey native and third baseman Todd Frazier, and an experienced veteran in Jaime Garcia, whose grandfather once predicted that he would someday be wearing the famed pinstripes.

  The first whispers were heard prior to a July 18 game at Target Field, where the Yankees were about to play the middle game of a three-game series against the Twins. In Chicago, Frazier had been a “healthy scratch” from the White Sox lineup, and speculation followed on social media that he was being traded to the Red Sox, who were seeking a replacement for underwhelming third baseman Pablo Sandoval.

  Girardi had a better source of information, speaking to Cashman from the visiting manager’s office. He kept his secret close to the vest, steering his team to a 6–3 victory, but trickles of information reached the dugout by the ninth inning. The Yankees were not only adding Frazier, but they had also acquired Kahnle and Robertson in exchange for four players: right-hander Tyler Clippard, left-hander Ian Clarkin, and outfielders Tito Polo and Blake Rutherford.

  “It’s exciting that we did something to get better,” said Chase Headley, who shifted from third base to first base in order to accommodate Frazier’s arrival. “We’re in a tough stretch where we’re not playing great and we go out there and make a move that makes it feel like the front office and the team believes in us.”

  The negotiations with the White Sox had opened with the Yankees’ unsuccessful pursuit of Jose Quintana, as Cashman spent months attempting to land the left-handed starter, who had been an All-Star in 2016. When Quintana was dealt instead across town to the Cubs on July 13, the White Sox circled back to the Yankees to see if a different deal could be explored, eyeing the twenty-year-old Rutherford as a centerpiece.

  Cashman said that it had been difficult to part with Rutherford, a left-handed-hitting high school standout who grew up with a shrine to Jeter and the Yankees in the game room of his Simi Valley, California, home. Rutherford’s talents had merited a $3.28 million signing bonus after being selected in the first round in the 2016 draft, but there was also undeniable appeal in adding Kahnle and Robertson to what was already viewed as one of the league’s top bullpens.

  “Selfishly, you want them all to be Yankees,” said Damon Oppenheimer, who directed Rutherford’s selection in the first round of the 2016 draft. “You draft them, you talk to them, you develop relationships with them. You want them all to contribute to the New York Yankees and that’s what they want, but at the end of the day, it’s a business. We can’t control where they’re going to play and who they’re going to play for.”

  The trade delighted Roberts
on, who had been one of Mariano Rivera’s successors before signing a four-year, $46 million contract with Chicago as a free agent following the 2014 season. Until the trade, Robertson’s blown save in Jeter’s final home game had been his penultimate appearance as a Yankee. The thirty-two-year-old instantly sensed a different vibe in the clubhouse, where he joked that he was “the new old guy.”

  “It had to get younger,” Robertson said. “It couldn’t get any older when I was here.”

  Indeed, the Yankees would use seventeen rookies by the end of the regular season, including twelve who made their big league debuts: Miguel Andujar, Garrett Cooper, Dustin Fowler, Clint Frazier, Giovanny Gallegos, Domingo German, Ronald Herrera, Kyle Higashioka, Jordan Montgomery, Caleb Smith, Tyler Wade, and Tyler Webb.

  Clint Frazier had been wearing uniform No. 30, but he yielded that to Robertson, allowing the reliever to reclaim the digits that he had worn during his previous tour with the Yankees. There were some laughs heard when Frazier opted for No. 77, as he’d been involved in a minor stir earlier in the season when it was reported that he had asked someone if the Yankees ever consider un-retiring numbers. Frazier said that putting on No. 77 had nothing to do with Mickey Mantle, for whom No. 7 has been out of circulation since 1969.

  “I wanted a number with seven in it,” Frazier said. “There’s not many available numbers and Judge wears 99, so maybe go with something like 77. I hope someone else picks up 88 in the outfield. I think it’s going to look cool with me and Judge on the corners.”

  Todd Frazier also had to find a new uniform number, having worn No. 21 in his stints with the Reds and White Sox. While not officially retired, No. 21 has been kept largely out of circulation by the Yankees since Paul O’Neill’s final game in the 2001 World Series. When reliever LaTroy Hawkins tried using it in 2008 as a tribute to Roberto Clemente, the fan reaction was so negative, Hawkins gave it up by mid-April.

  Clubhouse manager Rob Cucuzza issued Frazier No. 29 upon his arrival, and though Frazier initially said that he would seek O’Neill’s blessing to wear the number when the team returned home from their road trip, the conversation never took place. Frazier said that he had spoken to “a couple of guys,” who convinced him that it would be better to leave the number to “The Warrior.” The Yankees have retired twenty-one of their numbers for twenty-two players, including all of the single digits, but there are no plans to do so for O’Neill. He is, however, honored with a plaque in Monument Park.

  There were more important numbers to consider. Though Frazier was batting .207 at the time of the trade, the Yankees’ analytics department speculated that some of it might be attributed to bad luck, pointing out his bizarrely low .144 batting average on balls hit in play in White Sox home games.

  A 1998 Little League World Series champion who once took the field alongside Jeter at the old Yankee Stadium (Frazier said he feels sorry for how many times Jeter has been asked about that day in the years that have followed), Frazier made the eighty-five-mile commute from his home in Toms River, New Jersey, while he and his family sought a more geographically friendly place to rest their heads.

  “I’ll be stuck in traffic and yelling at my steering wheel the whole time, but hopefully it’s after a win, so it won’t be that bad,” Frazier said. “To do it every day at home for a seven to ten day home stand, it gets to be a pain in the butt.”

  Cashman said that the Yankees insisted upon getting Kahnle, a heat-throwing right-hander who had recorded an eye-popping 60 strikeouts against seven walks in 36 innings at the time of the trade. A product of Latham, New York, Kahnle spent his first four pro years envisioning himself running through the bullpen gate at Yankee Stadium, having been selected by the Yankees in the fifth round of the 2010 draft. That dream took a detour when Kahnle was taken by the Rockies in the 2013 Rule 5 Draft, then dealt to Chicago two years later.

  “It definitely means a lot [to come back],” Kahnle said. “Growing up, a lot of my family and friends were all Yankees fans. I feel like I want to do good for them. Each day, I’m just going to come to the yard, work hard and do what I’ve been doing.”

  • • •

  The Yankees returned home on July 25 for the seventy-first annual Old-Timers Day, again paying special attention to the twentieth anniversary of the 1996 World Series championship club. Standing behind the batting cage underneath blinding sun, Jorge Posada said that he could hear echoes of those winning teams in these young Yankees, who were in the middle of what would be a stretch of nine victories in eleven games.

  “I see guys who are hungry. They don’t quit,” Posada said. “Even down six or seven runs, they still give it a fight. You don’t want to throw away at-bats, and I see guys grinding at-bats. That’s what we used to do back then.”

  Though wary of putting pressure on Girardi by comparing the current squad to his own clubs, Joe Torre agreed that the Yankees seemed to have the makings of something special.

  “When I spoke with Aaron Judge early in the year, he seems to have his head screwed on right,” Torre said. “He has a ton of ability and seems very grounded. I know it’s fun for a manager when you see young players develop, especially in the fishbowl of New York. You have to go back to giving Brian Cashman a great deal of credit for this. I’m not sure, if George was still with us, that he would have let the Yankees do some wholesale selling of some of their veterans a couple years ago. But it certainly is paying off.”

  With Michael Pineda lost for the season, Cashman padded the rotation by plucking Jaime Garcia from the Twins. The left-hander had pitched only once for Minnesota following a July 24 trade with the Braves; in fact, Garcia never set foot in the home clubhouse at Target Field, as both of his trades had occurred during the same road trip. No pitcher since Gus Wehling in 1895 had made three consecutive starts for three different teams.

  Acquired in exchange for pitching prospects Dietrich Enns and Zack Littell, the thirty-one-year-old Garcia was viewed as an upgrade over Luis Cessa and Caleb Smith, who had made a series of forgettable starts in Pineda’s absence. As a bonus, the Twins (seven games off the pace in the AL Central and appearing to give up hope on a playoff spot) agreed to assume the remainder of Garcia’s salary—approximately $4 million.

  “My grandfather was always a huge Yankee fan,” Garcia said. “He told me when I was a kid [that] he would always see me playing for the Yankees one day. So my mom was very emotional about it because of that story. My grandfather passed away when I was thirteen years old. The family was touched by that because they were all Yankees fans.”

  Garcia’s presence allowed the Yankees to remain mindful of the growing innings totals attached to both Montgomery and Severino. While they’d keep the gas pedal depressed on Severino through October, the Yankees eased off of Montgomery, bouncing him between the minors and the bullpen to wrap his season at 155⅓ innings. Montgomery finished 9-7 with a 3.88 ERA in 29 starts, leading all AL rookies in starts, strikeouts (144), innings, and WAR (2.7).

  “You definitely think of the big leagues and you think, ‘Oh, wow, it’s going to be really hard,’” Montgomery said. “It’s lived up to it. You’ve just got to settle in and trust yourself.”

  With those moves, the Yankees had clearly announced their intent to chase a playoff spot, so acquiring Gray from the Athletics seemed like a natural fit. Gray was already convinced that his time in Oakland was coming to an end, and he had an ideal destination in mind, as the Vanderbilt-educated native of Smyrna, Tennessee, remarked that “every kid wants to play for the Yankees.”

  The A’s demanded legitimate talent for Gray, whose five-foot-ten, 190-pound frame generated a nasty arsenal of four-seam fastballs, sinkers, and curveballs. Cashman understood that at least one of the players he surrendered could develop into a star, but said that the team’s strong play had dictated that they must “push a lot of these chips in the middle of the table and recognize 2017 has a chance to be special.”

  About an hour before the 4:00 p.m. ET deadline on July 31, the Y
ankees agreed to send outfielder Dustin Fowler, right-hander James Kaprielian, and infielder Jorge Mateo to the Athletics in exchange for Gray and $1.5 million in international bonus pool signing money. The cash was a not-so-subtle nod to the anticipated availability of the “Japanese Babe Ruth,” twenty-three-year-old Shohei Ohtani, a right-handed pitcher and left-handed slugger whom the Yankees had scouted since 2012.

  Cashman would say that he viewed Ohtani as a “perfect fit” given the youth movement, but Ohtani quickly eliminated the Yankees in early December, eventually signing with the Angels. Cashman was told that Ohtani had expressed a preference not to play for a large market, East Coast club. Often, New York City was a selling point; this time, it had not been.

  “When players are in the marketplace like that, you do everything you possibly can,” Cashman said. “In this case, we prepared with trade deadline money, acquisitions, international slot money. We put forward everything that we were about, but if it’s not a fit, it’s not a fit.”

  Two of the three players that Oakland received in the Gray trade were injured assets; Fowler was on crutches, and Kaprielian’s right arm had recently been in a sling. Despite the Yankees’ best efforts to protect their top pitching prospect, permitting him to pitch in only one Grapefruit League game that spring, Kaprielian experienced pain in his pitching elbow and underwent Tommy John surgery in April.

  The healthy piece of the deal for Oakland was Mateo, a speedy infielder who appeared to be blocked on New York’s depth chart by Gregorius and Gleyber Torres, prompting the club to experiment with Mateo in the outfield. The Athletics viewed Mateo as a future big-league regular in the infield, and given the chance, Cashman believed that he would become one.

  Still, Gray’s high-end talent—and the fact that he would not be eligible for free agency until 2020—made it a gamble worth taking in the GM’s eyes. Oakland’s first-round selection (eighteenth overall) in 2011, Gray lost most of the ’16 season to a pair of stints on the disabled list, but he seemed to be again throwing the ball with authority. In his final six starts as a member of the A’s, the twenty-seven-year-old went 4-2 with a 1.37 ERA.